The Canadian Field-Naturalist
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01_04037_OFN.qxd 11/30/04 12:35 AM Page 1 The Canadian Field-Naturalist Volume 118, Number 1 January–March 2004 Origins and History of The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club DANIEL F. BRUNTON 216 Lincoln Heights Road, Ottawa, Ontario K2B 8A8 Canada; e-mail: [email protected] Brunton, Daniel F. 2004. Origins and history of The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club. Canadian Field-Naturalist 118(1): 1–38. The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club (OFNC) represents an unbroken chain of organized, non-governmental natural history investigation and education dating back to the early days of the city of Ottawa itself. The Club originated in 1863 with the formation of the Ottawa Natural History Society which became the Natural History branch of the Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society in 1870, from which the OFNC formally separated in March 1879. Since that time, it has grown into Canada’s oldest and largest regional natural history organization and has produced a diverse and internationally recognized publication program. Since 1880 The Canadian Field-Naturalist and its predecessors have constituted the scientific core of the OFNC’s publication program, with Trail & Landscape being an important Ottawa Valley publication since the late 1960s. The importance of both publications to the growth and health of the organization is reflected in the major surges in Club membership experienced when each of these publications was established. The focus of membership activities has changed over the history of the OFNC, with enlightened natural resource management, then original scientific research and local exploration directing energies in the early decades. By the early years of the 20th century the publications program become the raison d’etre of the Club, almost to the exclusion of local field activities. A renewed interest in field discovery and the growth of conservation awareness in the 1960s, however, rekindled local activities and re-established the balance which has sustained the organization throughout its history. Natural environment education has remained a critical theme within OFNC programs and activities. Over and above inspiring the professional careers and private interests of thousands of individuals for more than a century, the OFNC has had an important and lasting impact on the conservation of natural environment features and landscapes in Canada and North America. Key Words: Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club; Ottawa Natural History Society; The Canadian Field-Naturalist; Trail & Landscape. Canada was a mere 12 years old in 1879 when 34 of the Governor General and his politically and socially members of the Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society powerful entourage – dictated more about one’s status (OLSS) gathered together on an early spring evening and options than personal wealth or political position to discuss a growing problem within Ottawa’s fledg- (Gwyn 1984). ling naturalist community. Most were full of Victorian The events which unfolded that cool spring evening enthusiasm for discovery and intellectual advance- in the OLSS rooms perched above the muddy streets of ment and were convinced of the limitless potential of Ottawa launched careers, changed government policy, their new country. These young men – and they were protected tens of thousands of hectares of Canadian all men, mostly in their 20s or 30s – were frustrated natural landscape, produced internationally recognized by what they saw as an ineffective, moribund OLSS and significant scientific publications, made huge con- Natural History Branch which did not serve their needs. tributions to our understanding and appreciation of These impatient “young Turks” wanted to actually do North American natural sciences, and enriched thou- things, to get out into the countryside of the Ottawa sands upon thousands of lives. Oh yes … and initiated Valley to explore and discover its natural wonders. And what has become the largest and oldest regional natu- with true Victorian missionary zeal, they wanted to ralist organization in Canada’s history, The Ottawa share these revelations amongst themselves and with Field-Naturalists’ Club (OFNC). the larger Canadian – even international – commu- nity. All of this in the name of personal intellectual The Pioneers (1840s-1863) development as well as the chance to advance the Although the formal beginning of The Ottawa Field- scientific and applied benefits of such knowledge. That Naturalists’ Club in 1879 was 125 years ago, natural- was heady, revolutionary stuff in the staid, conserva- ists’ organizations in the Capital actually pre-date Can- tive Ottawa of March 1879 when how close one was to ada itself (Brault 1946; Dore 1968; Taylor 1986). Prior Rideau Hall – the literal and figurative operational base to Confederation, Ottawa (and Bytown before it) was 1 01_04037_OFN.qxd 11/30/04 12:35 AM Page 2 2THE CANADIAN FIELD-NATURALIST Vol. 118 a rude little lumber town characterized more by saw- dust, beer and brawls than by intellectual achievement. The only adult education or research institution pre- sent in those early days was the Mechanics Institute, a charitable organization initiated in 1847 as something akin to a continuing education facility and library for working men. There were no such things as “night school” or public libraries, let alone publicly accessi- ble research organizations. An informal group known as the Silurian Society interested in geological (and mining?) issues was also reported to be active in the 1850s. “Active” may be a misnomer, since they left little reference of their doings, other than to suggest that their meetings were held “in the City of Ottawa” (Anonymous 1854). The only natural environment research being under- taken in the Ottawa Valley before the 1860s was by three highly active individuals. Edward Van Cortlandt (1805-1875) was the most socially prominent of these. He was one of the first doctors in Bytown, arriving in 1832 to attend to the military personnel stationed on Barracks Hill (now Parliament Hill). He developed an extensive private museum of curiosities and artifacts in the 1840s, liberally mixing archaeological specimens found at aboriginal sites along the Ottawa River with natural items dug up, collected, and/or shot in the vicinity of the town. He was, by all accounts, a remark- ably energetic man who used his high social standing to influence local business leaders in natural resource- oriented concerns (Moffatt 1986). FIGURE 1. Elkanah Billings. Billings was born in 1820, became Another dynamo was Elkanah Billings (1820-1876) one of the earliest naturalists in Ottawa, and pub- (Figure 1), second son of one of Ottawa’s first pio- lished the first journal on natural history in Ontario in neer families. Billings was passionately interested in 1856 (see Figure 2). He moved to Montreal later that natural history in general and geology/paleontology year to become the first palaeontologist of the Geo- logical Survey of Canada, and the initial curator of its in particular. At various times he was a newspaper pub- museum. (reproduction of the OFNC-commissioned lisher (The Bytown Citizen, forerunner of The Ottawa portrait, from The Ottawa Naturalist, February 1901). Citizen), a lawyer and finally, Canada’s first profes- sional paleontologist. Indeed, this latter science was his true calling and he came to be known as “the father dian Geological Survey, however, permanently ended of Canadian paleontology” (Whiteaves 1876; Clarke his Ottawa connection (Zaslow 1975). 1971). He presumably was involved in the aforemen- Elkanah Billings’ older brother, Braddish Billings Jr. tioned Silurian Society, but no direct evidence of that (1819-1871), completes the trio of Ottawa’s pioneer was found. The Bytown Citizen was full of natural his- resident naturalists. Braddish was a keen botanist and tory items during Billings’s tenure (1852-1856), mostly used his position as chief clerk on the Prescott & Otta- representing accounts of his own observations or text wa Railway to gain access to a wide variety of habitats reprinted from European or American publications. across eastern Ontario. Although he published nothing These publication activities led directly to his produc- during this time and relatively little even later, in 1868 tion in Ottawa of Ontario’s first natural science journal, he did produce the first list of vascular plants for the The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, in February city of Ottawa. It was a superb effort for its day, chron- 1856 (Figure 2). Delightful and insightful articles in icling over 400 species that he found within close that first volume such as “On the species of woodpeck- proximity to the City in 1866 (Dore 1968). Billings ers observed in the vicinity of Ottawa” (Billings 1856) was seen as a distinguished figure in natural history were based on his extensive travels in the Ottawa investigations in the Ottawa Valley in the 1860s; like Valley. They demonstrated both excellent powers of his younger brother Elkanah, Braddish was widely observation and a keen appreciation of the importance consulted by natural science researchers elsewhere in of documenting the appearance and constitution of Canada (Dore 1968). original landscape conditions. His move to Montreal The days of exclusively private investigation of the later that year to join Sir William Logan at the Cana- Ottawa Valley natural environment ended in the early 01_04037_OFN.qxd 11/30/04 12:35 AM Page 3 2004 BRUNTON:THE OTTAWA FIELD-NATURALISTS’CLUB 3 by the continuing search for the ill-fated Third Frank- lin Expedition. The United States Civil War and the accompanying ferocious slavery debate raged uncom- fortably close to the south, as did intense arguments in the Old World regarding the newly published (1859) “heresies” of Charles Darwin’s On the origin of spe- cies. Closer to home, Ottawa was a bustling, rapidly growing city of approximately 15 000 people which boasted but a single operating sewer line along Welling- ton Street in front of the new Parliament Buildings. The first railway train had puffed into town fewer than ten years earlier and a municipal drinking-water system was still 12 years off (Brault 1946; Eggleston 1961).